Your process is showing: Ajax

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by Shira Leuchter

Last month I was able to spend an afternoon with Frank Cox-O’Connell and Evan Webber (and Christopher Stanton on the sound board) as they worked on their piece Ajax.

This intimate piece will be staged alongside Little Iliad this spring. I was able to watch them work through two sequences – the beginning and the end – of the piece. The show will only accommodate a very small audience so I’d urge you to book tickets really early – all of the tickets for this year’s World Stage season have just gone on sale on November 1^st.

Materials: Vellum, Tape

About the show: Ajax & Little Iliad will play from April 4-8, 2012 as part of this year’s World Stage season at Harbourfront Centre.
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Shira Leuchter makes performance stuff and other art stuff. She recently worked with UnSpun Theatre on a new piece that was performed as part of Harbourfront’s HATCH program.

Her website is here and she collects all of her shallowest thoughts here.

Your process is showing: Project 3/2/1

by Shira Leuchter

Project 3/2/1 is an evening of dance that features three choreographies and a cast of six dancers, who perform all six roles on an alternating basis throughout the run of the show. I was very fortunate to have been able to sit in on a rehearsal of Ame Henderson’s piece, this body is another body, late in its rehearsal process.

As a response to the process that I observed, I made this piece using watercolour, ink, found text, a photograph of Philip Johnson’s Glass House, and an image of the night sky.

Project 3/2/1 runs from April 6 – 17, 2011 at Dancemakers Centre for Creation. You should probably go twice.
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Shira Leuchter makes performance stuff and other art stuff. She is currently working with UnSpun Theatre on a new piece that will be performed as part of Harbourfront’s HATCH program this April. She collects all of her shallowest thoughts here.

Click here to see “Your process is showing: an introduction”.

Your process is showing: Montparnasse

by Shira Leuchter

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Earlier this month, the amazing women who created Montparnasse invited me in to one of their rehearsals to observe their process for this series. Just in time for their preview performances starting tonight, I’ve finished a piece that responds to what I observed that day.

I created this piece using transparent layers of vintage sewing patterns, paper ruffles hand-sewn with embroidery thread, wood veneer and ink tracings of an etching of St. Basil monastery c.1757.

It was a joy to be in the room with Andrea Donaldson, Maev Beaty, Erin Shields, Kristy Kennedy and the other folks who are bringing this piece together. I heartily encourage you to make time to see Montparnasse during its run at Theatre Passe Muraille.
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Shira Leuchter makes performance stuff and other art stuff. She is currently working with UnSpun Theatre on a new piece that will be performed as part of Harbourfront’s HATCH program this April. She collects all of her shallowest thoughts here.

Click here to see “Your process is showing: an introduction”.

Your process is showing: an introduction

(l-r) Mass [Cross-Section], Holy Vedas [Brain Scan], Savannah [Cellular Scan]. Click to enlarge

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by Shira Leuchter

I am going to try a little something here. It’s not often that I have the opportunity to unite my practices of performance-making and fine-art-making, but the Praxis blog seems like the perfect place to give it a go on a regular basis.

So, how am I going to do this? Well, the questions I’ve chosen to explore are: what does process look like? What kind of image would I make or select if I had to find a way to visually represent a process of creating performance?

Here’s what I’m going to do. It’ll be en experiment that I’ll share with you every month, right here. It’ll be a personal exploration that I’d love you to witness, respond to and try to figure out alongside me.

I’m going to sit in on some rehearsals. I’m going to watch all sorts of processes. I’m going to profusely thank those who let me in to their rehearsal rooms to observe what they do and how they make their work. Then I’m going to make something as a response to that particular act of creation. It could be any form of visual representation – a painting, a collage, a dress, a meal – I’ll let what I see determine what I make.

One Block - Click to enlarge

I’ll try my best to choose work that will be in performance close to the posting dates, so that you’ll have the opportunity to actually see the piece.

I know that this work will be personal to me, that you’ll have to see these processes through my eyes. My big hope is that, by taking a close look at How We Make Things, we can start a conversation about how different ways of art-making converge and deviate.

One last thing: I’m not going to write much about what I saw and how I came to make what I’ve made. Sometimes I may not write anything at all. But I will always tell you what materials I’ve used and what piece I’m responding to.
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Images:

• The Room asked me to make pieces for The Red Machine as a response to the brain’s temporal lobes, commonly thought of as the religious centre of the brain. The top images are personal photographs with found images (2009).
• A work-in-progress piece responding to One Block. I’ll probably keep adding to this as the process continues. Encaustic and oil with found archival photographs and images donated by anonymous Toronto residents.

Shira Leuchter makes performance stuff and other art stuff. She is currently working with UnSpun Theatre on a new piece that will be performed as part of Harbourfront’s HATCH program this April. She collects all of her shallowest thoughts here.